Tell the Obama administration: Suspend deportations now

To:
Tell the Obama administration: Suspend deportations now

The Obama Administration should use all legal means available to suspend deportations and expand deferred action to immigrants who would have qualified for legalization under the Senate’s immigration bill blocked by House Republicans.

Why is this important?

President Obama has deported more immigrants than any president in history -- more than 1,000 every day. The administration may have believed that preemptively accelerating deportations and taking steps to further militarize our southern border would win over Republicans to a comprehensive immigration reform bill. That clearly didn’t happen and now the administration must take action to stop the deportations that are tearing families apart.

The President recently asked the Attorney General Eric Holder and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson to study what the administration can do with regards to deportations. So now is the time to generate as much public pressure as possible.

Over 11 million aspiring undocumented immigrants are currently living in the United States and will live here for the rest of their lives. I am one of these aspiring to have an opportunity to contribute to our country, and am now working in the immigrant youth rights movement at United We Dream.

Thanks to activism of thousands of other undocumented youth across the country in 2012 President Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed young people like me to finally live without the fear of deportation.

But the vast majority of our families are still not covered by president Obama’s DACA and most are still prevented from working or driving and still live in constant fear of being deported. Tragically, many of these 11 million people would have been granted a pathway to citizenship under the immigration bill recently blocked by House Republicans.

Regardless of what Representative Steve King and extreme right-wing Republicans in Congress say, we all know that there is no way that the 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. without papers can all be deported. The question before the country now is not whether they stay, but under what conditions they stay.

It is long past time for President Obama’s administration to take action and do for the American people what the Republican-controlled House refuses to do.

President Obama must use his executive authority to offer affirmative relief to million of undocumented immigrants by decreasing the number deportations and directing his Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice to use compassion and common sense in how we treat immigrants and their families. Affirmative relief must include using all legal means available to expand deferred action to immigrants who would have qualified for legalization under the Senate’s immigration reform bill.

Join me in urging President Obama’s administration to use its legal authority to stop the deportations that are breaking up families.